Growing Up
by fowl68
Summary: Sometimes you wish you knew just when it all changed and then you wish you could go back and do it over.


**Disclaimer:** Don't own anything.

**Author's Note:** I just randomly got this idea when we were driving back from watching the new GI Joe and Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog. The weird combination is probably what did it.

-~-~-~-

_Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what happened. ~Jennifer Yane_

-~-~-~

No matter how many times someone may ponder the question 'When and why did everything get so turned upside-down?', you never learn that you will never learn the answer.

"_Will you help me with this, Nii-san?"_

The world liked to challenge the set rules of a child's mind; liked to show them that there really wasn't much that they could do. And it's only later that you're looking down at your older brother's body, your own body still trembling a little from the fight, that you wonder when everything changed.

When did you begin hating the man who'd never minded taking the time to sit and listen to a child's problems; who taught you to swim, who'd patiently read the same book to you over and over because it was your favorite? Who took the longest route home because neither of you really wanted to see your parents just yet? Who soothed you when you stood at the doorway, eyes fearful of the raging storm outside?

Sometimes you wish you knew just when it all changed and then you wish you could go back and do it over.

"_I'll become Hokage and prove myself to everyone!"_

He wished someone had told him how much pain would be on the way to Hokage, wished someone had told him that friends _can_ betray each other and sometimes brothers aren't forever.

He and his best friend (because brothers aren't as forever, they just seem like that) had hurt each other before, had fought and played vicious games. Sometimes to relieve their own loneliness, the frustration, sometimes they had a better reason. But after every fight, every injury, they'd been able to forgive each other and patch each other up because _there had been nobody else_ to do it. They'd fought with each other, but _for_ each other too.

But now he had a wider circle of people there, people to love. He has a wife with a kid on the way. Maybe that was all the difference needed. Logically, he could say he no longer needed his (not brother) best friend. But since when has logic dictated the ways of the heart?

"_Next time, I'm going with you."_

No one told her that in two years, her boys would already be accustoming themselves to the blood. She'd been a full-fledged medic for almost a year now and had also seen her fair share of blood. But she hadn't seen it on faces that she loved, hadn't ever thought that the grinning, whiskered face of a close friend could ever be painted that terrible red and she'd wished she never saw the handsome, pale face turn ashy with blood loss.

Her mentor had taken her shoulder firmly in the hospital corridor and told her to sit and wait. No one had ever told her before that being too emotionally involved could make someone make mistakes. But even in two years of hard missions, she'd never had to sit outside and wait for someone to tell her if her boys would be okay.

And it was the worst feeling in the world, not knowing.

_And all the king's horses and all the king's men_

"He's crashing!"

"We've got a flatline!"

"Get me .4 of atropine and the infusions."

"Clear!" A pregnant pause. "Clear!"

_Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again._

She wasn't the only one standing outside that hospital room, wasn't the only one whose face drained of color when they heard the words, "I'm sorry...he's gone." She wasn't even the only one that felt salty tears trailing down her cheeks. She wasn't the only one to sit on her bed at home, silent tears dripping.

But she was the only one that caught sight of her bookshelf, dimly, distantly; as though it wasn't physically there. Like it was a ghost. Because she hadn't read most of the books on that bookshelf in a long time. And one of the books was lying on the bottom shelf, cover side up.

Peter Pan.

He'd never wanted to grow up. And, had someone told her that growing up would hurt this much, she wouldn't have wanted to grow up either.


End file.
